


take me out with the crowd

by friendly_ficus



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Love of the Game, Tough Love Dimension, alternates, fixing the telephone tragedy feat. the lovers because that’s my team, this fic is propaganda for the relief decree. i think it would be Neat.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: After the fourth season, Sebastian finds himself far from home; he'd really like to find a way back.The Lovers lend a helping hand.
Relationships: Sebastian Telephone & Jessica Telephone, Sebastian Telephone & Kichiro Guerra
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	take me out with the crowd

**Author's Note:**

> hey, i’m not on the discord and i perpetually feel like i’m behind on the lore for this game, but also if i was separated from my siblings by an alternate dimension and then the alternate me was incinerated i would be VERY sad and would want that to get fixed. all this to say, i went with the pronouns on the wiki for everybody but the characterization and team lore probably won’t always fit; i hope this is still a fun read!! we are all love blaseball!

Sebastian blinks stars from his eyes, reaching up to make sure he’s still got all his buttons. Everything went topsy-turvy after the decrees were announced and now he’s flat on his back with his head ringing, not in the usual way. Beside him on the ground Leach Herman groans, horns scraping the street.

He takes a deep breath, and the air tastes funny. It’s humid, a little chilly even. He doesn’t recognize the weather, staring at the sky as he is. It’s just clouds, not a bird or a solar eclipse in sight.

“Hey!” someone calls, and he sits up to see a Lovers player he doesn’t recognize jogging over. “Are you okay?”

Sebastian glances down at Leach, who seems okay, and looks down at himself. All the limbs are in the right place and he’s no more achy than he is after a long practice, so he nods. “I’m Sebastian Telephone,” he says, taking her hand and letting her pull him upright.

“Kichiro Guerra,” they say, smiling. “Just got dropped here with Parker Meng, also a Lover, but we split up looking for the rest of the team.”

At that, Sebastian looks around, hoping to see the rest of the Steaks, or. Or Jessica, even though she’s been with the Tigers or the Pies for the last three seasons. But it’s just the three of them in the chilly street, surrounded by tall, unfamiliar buildings. And beyond the buildings there are hills, stretching up and up as far as he can see, almost touching the weird clouds. Yeah, he’s not in Dallas anymore.

“Do you know where we are?” he asks, as they’re both helping Leach get up. 

“San Francisco, I think, but it’s... it’s a little weird, I guess.” Guerra frowns, picking at their uniform. “I’m used to it being more familiar, I guess, but I spend a lot of my time at the ballpark. We should probably head over there, it’s where me and Parker were gonna meet up.”

“Telephone,” Leach grumbles, making sure his hat’s in place, “Guerra. Thanks.”

“No problem, buddy!” he says, giving a thumbs up.

Guerra smiles again, uncertainty fading. “You got it, Herman! And call me Kichi, both of you!”

On the walk to the stadium, they pass a few bakeries selling  _ San Francisco’s Famous Sweetdough!  _ and at one point a bus rumbles by with an ad for a realtor promising to get people connected with their dream homes for a good, fair price. Kichi frowns a little more after each one. The fog in the air gradually thickens, like the clouds are coming down from the sky, and it doesn’t even put the smell of blood in the air.

They arrive to find a clubhouse in uproar, Parker Meng in a shouting match with one of the Helgas and Knight Urlacher. They’re  _ sure  _ she’s captain, they’re  _ sure  _ the Lovers are three-time champions, and they’re  _ sure  _ that everybody wants to get back to practice. Eventually Parker throws up her hands and tells them to go ahead, too frustrated to keep arguing.

“They picked a heck of a prank to play,” she tells Kichi, rubbing her temples. “I don’t get the joke, y’know? And what are Steaks doing in San Francisco—we’re not even in the same division right now, right?”

“I don’t think it’s just the divisions that got shaken up,” Kichi says, snagging an icepack from a nearby freezer and putting it on Parker’s head. The pitcher sighs, leaning into the cold relief. “We took a long walk out there, and I’m pretty sure this isn’t San Francisco. I mean, not  _ our  _ San Francisco.”

“What,” Parker groans, “the heck.”

“Sweetdough,” Kichi says, grim, and Parker groans again.

“Um,” Sebastian looks around the unfamiliar clubhouse, “anybody know how to get to Dallas?”

\---

Nobody knows how to get to Dallas. Nobody really knows how to get  _ anywhere,  _ beyond ‘that coffee place down the block’ and ‘the bus stop’ and the ballpark, of course. Something about the city defies navigation, much to the chagrin of Kennedy Map, who tries to help Sebastian chart a course for Dallas three times in the first three days. It’s like the routes shift every time they put the paper down; nothing fits together right. And the bus station doesn’t sell tickets to Dallas, Sebastian’s tried.

It’s not like the city doesn’t  _ exist;  _ everybody can hear the broadcasts of Steaks games, picked up on the clubhouse radio in a few different voices. Actually, you can pick up almost  _ any  _ game on the clubhouse radio, even the Lovers. Even when the Lovers are practicing instead of playing.

They’re kinda nice, the Lovers. A little prickly, which goes against what Sebastian thought he knew about them, but once you get past a hard shell of competitiveness they’re all pretty welcoming. They set Sebastian up with a bunk in a supply closet in the front office and include him in their weekly high-stakes hearts tournaments. He even gets to come to practice, as long as he promises not to leak any intelligence to the Spies or take notes on his shoes, susceptible to shoe theft as they are. Leach is on decent terms with the team too—something about being in a highly committed relationship with the entity making you play blaseball seems, while maybe a little unhealthy, very understandable to them. 

Kichi and Parker settle in after a brief period of friction, Parker suddenly having to do captain’s work on top of pitching and Kichi running into some disagreements about how old arguments worked out. The two of them seem... not  _ happy,  _ exactly, but like they’re figuring out how to be.

Sebastian... isn’t.

He wanders the hills between practices and when the Steaks come to town to play, not interested in meeting his alternate teammates. He presses his buttons in the peaks and valleys, calling and calling and calling. The fog presses all around him and he wanders it, listening, waiting for his head to ring back. It never does—he can’t even pick up a dial tone.

He eats a sweetdough bowl of tomato soup and catches the bus back to the ballpark.

\---

The Lovers are practicing, gearing up for a postseason run, when Parker calls him over. She’s been pitching to Don, who swings for the fences when he isn’t phasing out of reality, and she’s wincing.

“Shoulder strain,” she tells him, “I better not push it this close to game day. But you’ve been watching our practices for a while, right?”

“Uh huh?”

“I remember you not being a terrible pitcher—am I right?” 

“I’m... better at running? Or hitting? But I’m not  _ bad  _ I guess,” he offers. “Me and Jessi—I mean, I’m as good as a lot of people.”

“Listen up, Sebastian,” she says, pulling off her hat and putting it on his head. “I’m putting you in the practice rotation. Get warmed up and throw Don some pitches; it’s good for him to practice against different people, and Brown and Wheeler might pick up some things from you.”

Sebastian swallows, his mouth suddenly dry. “I’m a Steak.”

“I know,” Parker pats his shoulder. “But you’re here.”

He warms up and throws for what feels like forever; it’s hard to tell time here, with the sunless sky. When he starts flagging Don calls a halt, a grin curling across his face.

“You’re a good kid, Telephone,” he says. “You’d make a good addition, you know.”

Sebastian opens his mouth to refuse, but Don shakes his head. 

“I know, I know, you’re a Steak at heart. Just think about it for us, hm?” 

“Us?” he asks, confused, and Don nods behind him. Sebastian realizes that all the Lovers pitchers are watching him with various levels of evaluation; Milo Brown’s got stars in his eyes, while Carpenter and Garner are both looking contemplative.

Parker’s in the office next to his room, ice packs strapped to her arm. She calls him in when he passes by.

“What do you say to joining the rotation?” she asks, the light of competition in her eyes. 

“I’m a  _ Steak,”  _ he reminds her.

“I know, but you’re  _ here,  _ Sebastian. If you wanted to play with these Steaks, why didn’t you stick around when they came to play us?”

“I don’t...” He wishes his head would ring. He wishes he could ask Jessica—she was always changing teams, she’d  _ know  _ what to do right now. But Jessica isn’t here.

“I won’t have you pitch against them,” Parker says. The postseason bracket is drawn out on a whiteboard behind her head, frames her like wings. “I won’t even bring you in right now, since we might play them in the finals. But I want you to keep practicing with us, and I want you on the team for opening day.”

She’s not gonna  _ make  _ him play, he knows. The Lovers aren’t gonna kick him out if he says no, just like they didn’t kick Leach out when he was uninterested in going to practice or playing cards. But Sebastian... he wants to say yes. He  _ wants  _ to play, to come in and boost their pitchers or pinch-hit or  _ something.  _ He misses being on the field, dodging umpires and peanuts, hearing the fans cheer.

“What do you say?” Parker’s watching him, putting together a hundred season strategies all at once.

“Yes.” 

He’s a Steak, but he’s  _ here. _

\---

Opening day dawns foggy and gray, and Sebastian takes his place on the mound. 

The Philly Pies’ J. Telephone steps up to the plate, Dial Tone nowhere to be seen. It hurts when his head doesn’t ring, but he pushes it away; it’s not his world, it’s not his team, it’s not his sister.

He throws three sliders, high and sinking through the strike zone, and she swings at every single one. Strikeout.

The first inning passes, three up, three down. Then the second. Then the third.

The fans are muttering to each other by the time the fourth inning comes around, PA system whining when the announcer says his name. By the sixth, they’ve started to chant:  _ Te-le-phone. Te-le-phone. _

Sebastian pitches a shutout. The ballpark explodes with sound.

The Lovers clear the dugout after the last out, cheering, hefting him up on their shoulders. 

“That’s our Telephone!” Don shouts, starting to phase out of existence. “Part of the family!”

Sebastian grins, reflexively punching a number into the buttons on his face. No answer—not even a ring.

Leaving the stadium, J. Telephone doesn’t look back.

\---

Somewhere in the middle of the season Leach Herman switches back. As in,  _ switches back to reality.  _ He has time to scribble a note, leaves it half-finished under Sebastian’s door, something about the will of the gods and the inscrutable nature of peanuts.

On his way back to his room Sebastian hears a familiar ringing coming from a phone in the front office. He runs for it, feeling it echo through the circuits in his skull—and he’s a  _ second  _ too late to pick it up.

He dials Jessica. He dials Jessica. 

No answer.

\---

“Telephone,” Kichi sighs, upon finding him running sprints long after practice ends. They’ve got a takeout bag from the soup place up the street in one hand and a water bottle in the other.

“I think,” he gasps, coming to a stop, “I think we can go back. It’s  _ possible.” _

His alternate Lovers’ uniform sticks to his skin, his heart beating way too fast. Kichi frowns at him until he starts doing some cooldown exercises. Then they both sit on the grass, and he cracks open the water bottle they brought.

“I don’t want to,” they say, and he almost chokes.

_ “What?”  _ he splutters, wiping water off his chin. 

They shrug. “Parker’s here, she’s doing a really good job as captain, and I won’t go without her. Seems like Leach went  _ alone.”  _ Kichi says  _ alone  _ like it’s a swear, or something to be scared of.

“I didn’t mean—”

“And this is still my  _ team,”  _ Kichi says in a rush. “They’re a little different, but they’re my team. I don’t wanna leave them on  _ purpose.” _

Sebastian accepts half the sweetdough grilled cheese and a cup of tomato soup. The sky is as gray as always and the fog is cool against his face, coming in to fill the ballpark. It’s not so terrible, here, but nobody ever answers his calls.

“You’re really getting good at pitching,” Kichi says at last. “I was hoping... but you don’t really want to stay, do you?”

“I’ve always been a Steak,” he says, tired. “Everybody’s been good to me here, but... I don’t know about staying on as one of the Lovers. One of these Lovers, at least.”

“We don’t know how to get to Dallas.”

“Yeah,” he sighs, “and I don’t really wanna go there, either. It’s not—it’s not so bad here, but it’s not  _ mine,  _ you know?”

“Yeah.”

They eat soup and sandwiches in the quiet of the stadium for a while. It’s so strange, for the seats to not be full of fans, to not be playing all the time. It might be the strangest thing about being here. But it’s not the loneliest—he rubs a hand over his buttons.

“I was talking to Don the other day, and. We had an idea, to thank you for all your hard work this season.” Kichi bumps shoulders with him, trying to lighten the mood.

“What kind of idea? Letting me win at cards?”

“Ha! No. Look... you really love your sister, right? It makes you really sad to be separated.”

“Is it obvious?” At Kichi’s nod, he sighs again. “Even when she first went to the Pies after season one, it was hard. But we could still  _ talk,  _ y’know? She called me all the time.”

“I’m sorry, Telephone. That... this really sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“Don told me he goes there, sometimes.”

_ “What?” _ The empty paper cup of soup crumples in his grip. He feels, he feels—shock? An ache in his facial circuits.

“When he disappears, that’s where he goes. Back to the other reality.” Kichi’s quiet, the  _ what  _ still echoing through the park.

“Has he seen her? Jessica?” On instinct, Sebastian dials the number. No answer.

“I don’t think so,” Kichi says, sounding sorry. “But maybe... we were thinking maybe he could try to take you through  _ with  _ him. To take you home.”

\---

The alternate Lovers throw him a goodbye party. They don’t know when he’s gonna go, actually, so they just throw a little goodbye party at the end of every day. He gets a little teary at all of them, the team saying all this stuff they like about him. 

“We’re sorry to see you go,” Parker says at the end of each one, “but we’re happy you were here!”

And eventually the moment comes; Don bangs a hand on his door and Sebastian wrenches it open, gets their hands together just in time to feel a terrific  _ yank— _

And then they’re both on the field of a Lovers-Steaks game, dodging peanuts and umpires. Don swings, a hit, and he’s on first  _ and  _ second when Sebastian feels a coldness seeping through his entire body. He looks frantically for the other Sebastian, knows that they can swap back, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

The Don on first looks at him with terrified eyes, and Sebastian falls into the shadows.

\---

“Hey, kid,” someone’s saying, and Sebastian blinks away the darkness. 

He’s lying in the outfield at the Lovers’ stadium, far beyond the fielders and the fans. There’s just grass beneath him and the reassuring solar eclipse in the sky.

“What?” he wonders, and two sets of hands help him sit up. He barely recognizes the players—Lovers, they’ve got the uniforms on, but it’s been a long time since he’s seen either of them. They’d been featured in the  _ In Memoriam  _ pages of the Blaseball Beat, actually.

Paul Barnes and Miguel Javier flank him, a little shadowy and translucent. Sebastian looks at his hands, and  _ they’re  _ a little shadowy and translucent too. Huh.

“Don’t remember you joining the team,” Barnes says, “but welcome.”

“I remember you getting incinerated, actually,” Javier says. “For the Steaks, but word gets around. And here you are, in a Lovers jersey.”

There’s a long few beats of uncomfortable silence, where Sebastian worries they’ll kick him out or tell him to get lost.

“Wanna play catch?” Barnes asks. “Not much else to do out here, besides play catch and watch the scoreboard.”

Sebastian nods. They help him stand and put a glove in his hands.

\---

All three of them are sitting side-by-side, watching the scoreboard when Wheeler gives up the fifth run. Even all the way out in the outfield, the smell of pie crust turning a triumphant, delicious golden brown is on the wind.

Paul groans. “We can’t just  _ watch  _ this.”

“Suggestions?” Miguel asks.

Sebastian tilts his head to the side. When the wind is blowing their way, carrying the smell of pie, he can hear the faintest sound. A ringing.

“A substitution—”

_ “Who,  _ Barnes? I mean, Milo’ll try his best, but everyone else is resting.” Miguel groans as the top of the next inning passes by, with the Lovers putting no runners on base.

The ringing is getting a little louder. The buttons in Sebastian’s face itch.

Pies fans have started chanting:  _ Te-le-phone! Te-le-phone! _

“Me,” Sebastian says, and the two arguing players’ heads whip around to face him. “Send me in—they’re calling  _ my  _ name.”

“You sure? You’ve always been a Steak to this crowd. And it might... we’ve never tried to go back in. No telling what it might do,” Paul frowns.

_ Te-le-phone! Te-le-phone! _

The ringing gets louder. He can feel the sound buzzing through his teeth.

“I’m sure.”

\---

_ [The crackle of static as a microphone turns back on.] _

_ Well splorts fans, looks like the Lovers are bringing a substitute pitcher out from the Shadows, just in time to face the inimitable Jessica Telephone! Who could it—wait—it couldn’t be—! _

\---

Jessica steps up to the plate, Dial Tone buzzing in her hands. The pitcher does up the top button on his Lovers jersey and reaches up to adjust his hat, hand brushing his face on the way.

_ Te-le-phone! Te-le-phone! _

Across the endless distance between the mound and home plate, she catches the glint of a familiar smile.

Dial Tone starts to ring. 

The pitch comes flying across the plate, breaking at the last second.

Jessica swings, laughing, incandescent with joy.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic rests on a couple core theories i have about alternates: one, that it’s a swap of two people (meaning that when leach herman was replaced after the season 6 blessings, that was the original leach swapping _back_ after having improved at blaseball in the Tough Love Dimension). two, that reverb is actually don mitchell bringing in alternate don mitchell, meaning that there actually are two don mitchells in the game at once & there _is_ a way to travel between the dimensions beyond the Alternate Reality decree.  
> anyway i think we should all vote for relief this time around because it has the most fun narrative potential and also the lovers really were ten-zip for a while in the last game today and i wanted so badly for wheeler to get some relief.  
> leave a comment and let me know what you think, splorts fans!! writing this was a whole bunch of fun and i hope reading it was too!


End file.
